CHINA drone-maker DJI is betting on flying machines that shoot pesticides instead of photos to fend off growing competition in the global remote-controlled aircraft market.

The world leader in the civilian drones sector is switching its focus from leisure photography to more professional uses for its unmanned aerial vehicles, and it sees agriculture as the future for the burgeoning industry.

Half the space of DJI’s showroom in Shenzhen is dedicated to the recreational machines like the Phantom series, while the other half shows off the “enterprise” drones for agriculture, public safety, professional photography or film-making.

Propelled by rotors, the tiny crop dusting aircraft can carry a liquid payload of 15 kilograms to spray fields.

Piloted from a distance, one drone can cover the same surface as around 30 people and it does the job more efficiently, said Jiang Sanchun, manager of a small company that operates pesticide drones for farmers in northern China.

“Within five years, we went from drones that only took photos to machines specialized in first aid or agriculture,” DJI vice president Paul Xu told AFP at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen.

DJI was founded in 2006 in an apartment in Shenzhen by Frank Wang, a young graduate with a passion for model planes.

The company now makes almost two-thirds of the world’s civilian drones, according to an estimate by Frost & Sullivan, a market research company.

Its overall revenue reached US$1.5 billion last year.

Xu boasted that DJI “created a new market” in 2013 when it launched its Phantom drone with high-definition cameras.

Some 75 percent of its drones are sold abroad, mostly in the United States and Europe, and they are popular among people flying the crafts for fun or to take aerial photos.

A drone that landed on the White House lawn in 2015 was a DJI Phantom.

U.S. authorities issued news rules last year that cleared the way for small, commercial drones to operate across American airspace, while European Union regulators are trying to catch up.

(SD-Agencies)